Claudia Cardinale, star of ‘8½’ and ‘The Leopard,’ dies at 87

Acclaimed Italian actor Claudia Cardinale, who starred in some of essentially the most celebrated European movies of the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies, has died, AFP reported on Tuesday (September 23, 2025). She was 87.

She starred in additional than 100 movies and made-for-television productions, however she was finest identified for embodying youthful purity in Federico Fellini’s “8½,” wherein she co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni in 1963.

Cardinale additionally received reward for her function as Angelica Sedara in Luchino Visconti’s award-winning display screen adaptation of the historic novel “The Leopard” that very same 12 months and as a reformed prostitute in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western “Once Upon a Time in the West” in 1968.

She died in Nemours, France, surrounded by her youngsters, her agent Laurent Savry informed AFP. Savry and his company didn’t instantly return emailed requests for remark from The Associated Press.

Cardinale started her movie-career at the age of 17 after successful a magnificence contest in (*87*), the place she was born of Sicilian mother and father who had emigrated to North Africa. The contest introduced her to the Venice Film Festival, the place she got here to the eye of the Italian film trade.

Before coming into the sweetness contest she had anticipated to turn out to be a faculty instructor.

“The fact I’m making movies is just an accident,” Cardinale recalled whereas accepting a lifetime achievement award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2002. “When they asked me do you want to be in the movies?’ I said no and they insisted for six months.”

Her success got here within the wake of Sophia Loren’s worldwide stardom, and she was touted as Italy’s reply to Brigitte Bardot. While by no means reaching the extent of success of the French actor, she was nonetheless thought-about a star and labored with the main administrators in Europe and Hollywood.

“They gave me everything,” Cardinale mentioned. “It’s marvellous to live so many lives. I’ve been living more than 150 lives, totally different women.”

One of her earliest roles was as a black-clad Sicilian woman within the 1958 comedy traditional “Big Deal on Madonna Street.” It was produced by Franco Cristaldi, who managed her early profession and to whom she was married from 1966 to 1975.

The sensuous brunette with huge eyes was usually solid as a hot-blooded lady. As she had a deep voice and spoke Italian with a heavy French accent, her voice was dubbed in her early motion pictures.

Her profession in Hollywood introduced solely partial success as a result of she was not occupied with giving up European movie. Nonetheless, she achieved some fame by teaming with Rock Hudson within the 1965 comedy thriller “Blindfold” and one other comedy “Don’t Make Waves” with Tony Curtis two years later.

Cardinale herself thought-about the 1966 “The Professionals,” directed by Richard Brooks as the most effective of her Hollywood movies, the place she starred alongside Burt Lancaster, Jack Palance, Robert Ryan and Lee Marvin.

In a 2002 interview with the Guardian, she defined that the Hollywood studio “wanted me to sign a contract of exclusivity, and I refused. Because I’m a European actress and I was going there for movies.” “And I had a big opportunity with Richard Brooks, The Professionals,’ which is really a magnificent movie,” she mentioned. “For me, The Professionals’ is the best I did in Hollywood.”

Among her trade prizes was a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement that she acquired at the Venice movie competition almost 40 years after her preliminary look on display screen.

In 2000, Cardinale was named a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for the protection of girls’s rights.

She had two youngsters. One with Cristaldi and a second together with her later companion, Italian director Pasquale Squitieri.